Changing political leadership in an Indian province

The former Central Provinces and Berar were characterized by a great diversity of social and economic groups, and above all by regional division into Marathi and Hindi-spening areas. Such heterogeneity made for extreme factionalism in the conduct of political parties, and greatly retarded the development of a cohesive and representative political movement. The province, part of the Hindi

heartland of India, has been unaccountably neglected by historians of the Indian nationalist movement, and this important and carefully researched work is the first to trace in detail the various socio-economic factors which initially made the Marathi area the dominating political force in the province. Its hegemony was slowly eroded in the thirties by Hindi-speaking politicians, such as Raghavendra Rao, who won the confidence of succeeding British governors of the province. Subsequently, leaders like D. P. Mishra and R. S. Shukla, who became prominent members in the Congress government formed after the 1937 elections, established the Hindi-speaking group as the decisive political element in this area, as it had already become at the national level.